


The Wretched Dragon is Perplexed

by motleystitches (furius)



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Breastfeeding, Dragons, Implied Mpreg, M/M, Memory Loss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Transformation, Wall Sex, xmentales chat fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-18
Updated: 2013-02-18
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:17:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furius/pseuds/motleystitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a drought across the land. Charles searches for a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wretched Dragon is Perplexed

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired, oddly, by the following from "Michael Robartes and the Dancer" by W.B. Yeats.
> 
> Opinion is not worth a rush;  
> In this altar-piece the knight,  
> Who grips his long spear so to push  
> That dragon through the fading light,  
> Loved the lady; and it's plain  
> The half-dead dragon was her thought,  
> That every morning rose again  
> And dug its claws and shrieked and fought.  
> Could the impossible come to pass  
> She would have time to turn her eyes,  
> Her lover thought, upon the glass  
> And on the instant would grow wise.

“There are no dragons in Westchester. They’ve gone instinct.” The man’s voice croaked as he laughed, dry. Ash still covered the ground, the smell of burnt flesh. filled the air. Charles would be hungry if he didn’t want to retch.

“You’ve had no rain,” he said after the old man finished his retelling of some cradle tale. He had looked upon the grass on his way; a rippling sea of yellow and brown. These fields were fallow only last year, now the whole country was tinder and starving.

 

Charles, charged by the king, knew that there could be no taxes this year and aid must be given. How to convince him was a riddle that he would have to solve, later. First, why the rivers ran dry, the wells empty. And, he looked up, the sky deathly and emptily blue.

“Is there anyone I can speak to?” he asked.

“Only god,” answered the old man, but Charles gave him a flask of water, some coin, and when he saw the seal upon the saddlebag, he startled. “I did not know, milord-“

Charles waved away the awkward courtesy due to him. He had traveled without ceremony. He repeated his question and this time, was directed to the castle. Though, to say castle must send architects into apoplexy. It was a ruin. There was no one in the courtyard. Blackbird, his horse, trod disdainfully across the broken cobblestones to the great door where he snorted.

Charles dismounted and knocked on the door and called for an answer. Once, twice, thrice- the door opened. A worried face peered out. “Who are you?” A woman. No, a girl, perhaps lovely beneath all the dirt on her face. Her hair still gleamed in the noon day sun. Charles doffed his hat and bowed.

“I’m Sir Charles Francis Xavier. I’ve come on business from the king to speak with the castellan.”

“The castellan?” She frowned for a moment. “Oh, Erik.” She took a considering look at Charles’ sword and then opened the door. “Don’tmention the king to him, whatever you business,” she said.

Odd, Charles thought, as he was led away from the main corridor and instead of ascending the main staircase, led to a narrow door and then out again. The sun really was unbearable. He could hear metallic din that grew louder.

“Erik’s in his workshop,” his guide said. “It’s his lair and usually he wouldn’t hear anyone but I think he’ll make an exception for you. But please, don’t mention the king. I’m Raven, if he asks.”

Then she left Charles wondering if it had all been a trick, but all castles were labyrinths in its way and he had to speak to someone. He approached the workshop from whence the din emanated. Within, he saw the shadow of a figure. “Erik,” he called, and said his name, and his business without the king’s part.

“Who brought you?”

“Raven.”

At this, the figure turned. Roughspun shirt and leather breechs, soot on his face and his sweat dampened brow- Charles’ mouth went dry at the sight of this Erik. Erik, for his part, gratifyingly, seemed equally surprised.

“Lovely day,” said Charles insanely. “Quite hot.”

“It is,” replied Erik. “It’s even warmer yesterday.”

“No chance of rain.”

A bleak look toward the sky- “None”

This went on for a bit, then Charles turned his back. In a moment, he was caught. He never saw Erik move.

“Why have you come?” Erik hissed hotly by his ear. “If you’re going to leave?”

“I didn’t know you’d be in a castle,” said Charles, locking his arm on Erik’s arm and considered throwing him. As it was, he merely twisted out of the hold. “Castellan? Lord? Knight? Servant? Smith?”

“Everyone and none,” said Erik. “What was I suppose to do? You left me. Middle of nowhere tied to a stake.”

The nerve of him! Charles corrected Erik on two points: one, Erik left him. Two, in the middle of the city was not middle of nowhere.

“A strange city,” Erik amended. “Desperate for a knight.”

“And there you are,” said Charles.

“To fight a dragon.”

And yet Erik, rather, Lehnsherr, for Charles never knew his first name, was alive in front of him. Alive and whole. His limbs and body, pressed closely to Charles a moment ago, as wonderful as they had ever been. Charles said so, but Erik scowled.

“Ask me how long the fight lasted.”

His mood seemed strange, so Charles asked.

“A moment, perhaps less.”

“You didn’t fight?”

Erik laughed, an odd unhappy sound, half mocking. “Perhaps I did. All sacrifices fight for second, then their dying thought is the wretched dragon.”

Charles took a step back. “Sacrifice? Dying? Erik, what happened here?”

“Did you once tell me that dragons could take any form? That some book of lore talk of dragons consuming only watermelons, others only specific breeds of sheep?”

It was possible; Charles rambled. It was a known fault; there were those that minded it less, but they were also those who had hopes of Charles’ dedications on the altar of affection, so to speak.

“That dragon devoured knights.”

“Not an uncommon occurrence,” muttered Charles. “We are often charged with slaying them, though it does not diminish works of Saint George-“

“Saint?” Erik shook his head and took another step forward. “I am not dead, Charles, yet it devoured me.”

Charles’ mind refused the meaning. Devouring was only eat, was only teeth, was only tongue- He paled. Erik, incidentally, had never accepted Charles’ dedications.”When did you return, as yourself?” Erik, a little older, seemed healthy and hale. If there had been an injury, it was invisible.

“Two years.”

“I’m-” He was going to say glad, but reassurances seemed trite. What dragons do to maidenhood depended on the acts of the knight. What dragons did to knight depended only on the dragon.

“You spoke to them. It was you.”

The accusation was surely unjust. Charles rambled, but he only rambled to those he loved and wished to love, otherwise he rambled to his own reflection.

“I didn’t tell them to offer you to the dragon! I told them to let you go in the morning!”

“In the morning I was sent to the dragon, or else suffer my name to be burdened with coward ever afterwards. I was sent to the dragon and it devoured me and it’s now all I can think- “

Charles ignored the meaningful glance. “The dragon,” he said. Erik nodded. “And Raven?” Charles asked. “Is she the maiden meant for the dragon?”

“Raven’s the nurse.”

So Erik got a wife, who probably came with the castle, and who probably needed a knight, even if memory loss of two years. What was two years in thrity-four. “How long?” asked Charles, affecting calm.

“Nurse, bodyguard, teacher, sixty a month,” Erik was counting Raven’s duties as if Charles had came to be his purser. Charles question, however,made him frown. “No more than a year, I think.”

He as torn between some decision. “Come and see,” he said, but led Charles to a bath first, where he stripped half-naked and sluiced water over himself before reaching for a towel, wholly unconscious of Charles’s staring, the scars on his back of deep gouges that had healed over. He indicated that Charles should at least wash his hands and take off his surcoat. “She doesn’t like the smell.”

Intrigued, Charles followed Erik to what he thought was going to be a nursery. It nearly blinded him.The walls were covered with gold and silver.In the center is a crib, with jewels on them. The window, oddly, was barred shut.

Erik reached inside the cradle. His arms emerged holding a pink and white baby, red-haired and wide blue-eyed. She waved at Charles, who was staring at her wings.

“And now I know how dragons come to be,” Erik said.

“I didn’t- I didn’t-” Charles thought to himself, stuttering. “The drought-“ Then he shut his mouth.

“She’s my phoenix,” said Erik quietly. “I would’ve not lived without her.Two years. A bag of gold andg ems by my side and a child in my arms. And,” -he raised his voice- “your eyes.”

“Ridiculous.”

“The histories of Westchester, Sir Charles, forgets to mention why the dragons went extinct. I came here to find you, to wonder, only to discover that when Xaviers made their emblem, the dragons were gone. And yet, a long line of scholars and mediocre jousters followed, holding peace as the highest virtue. Non-interference, they advised the king and the king listened because it’s easier to have him hold power if he’s the only one who sends an occasional knight or two in his name after appeal instead of them having wandering afield, slaying dragons and maybe smirching his name.”

“I’ve no recollection of such things.” Yet Charles eyes remain fixed on the child in Erik’s arms, who gave him a sleepy smile and yawned, leaning into Erik’s chest.

“As it happens,” said Erik with a smile that haunted Charles’ dreams, “neither do I.”

“Suppose,” Charles said with difficulty, “suppose what you say is true. That the child is mine or some bastard branch of Xavier line. What makes her yours?”

Erik’s eyes widened. He hugged the child more closely to himself. “She’s mine. She knows me. She knew me when I held her.” And if to confirm Erik’s words, the child snuggled deeper into him, her wings folding flat, so that at a glance, they were like shiny red ruffles of her clothes. Erik looked down on her and shifted her slightly in her arms, expression besotted. “I had no notion of day or month and I had nearly forgotten how to swing a sword and even to speak, but I knew how to hold and to sooth her and she comes to me and no one else.” The last he said softly and with a hint of bitterness Charles did not like to contemplate.

There was some other reason that Erik was not telling, but now Charles only want to be as faraway as he could. If Lehnsherr had gone mad- Well, Charles always thought him on the verge. It added an unexpected thrill to his companionship, brief as it was. Errantry and a revenge quest had to part ways. “Magic,” he suggested, “to have you play nursemaid to some hellish spawn.”

“Hellish?” Erik raised his voice. The lines of his body went tense. “Hellish?” The child began to fuss and cry.

Charles had a headache. He did not remember much about crying, only that he disliked it. The volume got louder; Erik looked more distraught than a bride at her wedding feast and considerably angrier. The face of the child began to gleam, first with tears, then with more iridescence. Charles left the room.

He paced the hallways. The walls and door were thick. He thought he saw Raven for a moment, but couldn’t be sure. It was a while before Erik came out. 

“She’s asleep. You will not go in?” he asked, crossing his arms.

“No.”

“You will not slay the hellish spawn?”

“I will not kill a child,” answered Charles, indignant.

“Even though she may be hellish,” Erik challenged, cheeks flushed.

“You would kill me after.”

“You are armed, I’m not. You’re practised while I’ve been playing nursemaid.”

To this, Charles only said: “I’m sure other people have my eyes. Babies with red hair have blue eyes in general. My hair is not red.” Erik’s hair was deep auburn; distinctively coppery, under certain morning lights,which Charles had studied once. Charles forbore from mentioning it. “But if you wish claim her as your own, I will not say anything. She’s a child. Your business is your own. I will go, I think.”

“And what will you tell the king?”

“He should know what I tell him, that there’s a cessation from taxes, amnesty if necessary, supplies from other towns and cities, or abandon it to ruin and wilderness and consider his rule over the land ended.

“Though it is your family’s estate.”

Charles looked around. Westchester was the ancient seat of his family; but twenty generations had seen their house gaining wealth and power, moving closer to the capital with every additional title and honour. Once upon a time, they had left a steward here. Dead, perhaps, or else gone, for Erik and Raven to take up residence among the broken walls and the threadbare tapestries. “There’s nothing here,” he said.

“Except for me,” Erik answered, full of conviction that this meant something for Charles. “I’m going to remain here with our daughter whether or this land is overrun with wilderness or wildmen.”

“Your daughter,” Charles countered and would’ve gone if he knew the way down these halls. There was a long sigh behind him, then a hand upon his shoulder- a subtle weight, easily dislodged.

“Charles-” And Lehnsherr’s voice, that night before Charles trussed Shaw and then to leave Lehnsherr to think better than to defy the king’s command, had been less promising. Charles had rode early in the morning in a near day dream. Shaw was insensible by the time the dungeons received him.

Now Charles turned and tilted his head for the kiss Erik owed him. A very perfect kind of movement exist between lips and teeth and tongues sliding and thrusting against each other. He wrapped his arms against Erik to pull him against himself, one hand spanning a trim waist to hold him tight. He pushed Erik against the wall, the other hand to cushion the back of his head against the stone and pushed one leg between Erik’s until the close contact of their bodies drew out moans from both of them. It was the work of a moment to strip them both of their shirts. Impatient, Charles had both of his hands inside Erik’s trousers and around his buttocks. The castle air seemed cool against the heat burning from inside of him.

The hitched breath from Erik made for more urgency. Charles’ fingers sliding over the skin, found a break in the smoothness. It was either that, or the perfect trail of his fingers around Erik’s scarred back that made him stop.

He kissed Erik again, light-headed, lust-addled. Erik’s eyes were dark and wide and beautiful. Charles kissed the reddened mouth, the throat that arched so invitingly as the strain of Charles’ arousal met his own through layers of leather and cloth. There was no protest as Charles divested them of both, at least to their thighs, just to relish the hard curve straining so promisingly and hotly against his own nakedness.

He kissed down the Erik’s chest, suckling a bit at the lightly freckled skin, moving to a nipple. Erik let out a groan. Pushing at Charles shoulders as he swirled his tongue then grazed the tip with his teeth. One,then the next, the other gleaming in his sight, pink and hard and gleaming. He pinched the nub between his nails. Erik gasped and arched; his cock pearled at the tip.

Charles kissed down the abdomen then opened his mouth to take him in, licking at the head slightly until Erik cried out above him, then flattened his tongue against the length, sucking. His hands fit just at the hips, the light knots of scar tissue perfect maps for the span of his hands to still Erik from arching into him. Instead, he trembled, panting, as Charles took him deeper, coaxing him with mouth and fingers to groan and pant and lose his words.

Erik looked down at Charles, his mouth open, but for all that arousal. It’s the shade of despair in the passion that made Charles avert his eyes, let Erik spill down the dirty stone instead of in his throat. He was down on his knees, still hard, but he laid his face against Erik’s thigh, let his stubble graze the delicate skin. Then he saw it: the stylized X that seemed a dragon in flight, burnt, or branded at a place that seldom saw daylight.

A ray of light had entered from the high-windows to strike against the ground beside them. Charles curled his hands to a fist, as if to conseal the gold signet ring on his finger, just the perfect size, he knew, to fit against the mark.

Above him: “Do you see then?” Erik voice. “I could not get the dragon out of my thoughts.” He nudged Charles’ head away then turned. On his buttocks, there, scratched harshly against the skin, just a crude signature, or an X. The wounds must’ve been deep. Charles stood, fitted his fingers against the stripes against Erik’s back, trailed them from his shoulderblades.

“Some cruel-” For it was cruel. A body hanging from an enemy’s saddle would be marked like this, a slave to endure a whipping would have similar stripes- but no arrow and no whip would leave marks such marks: the hip, the back, the inside of his thigh and leave also-

“What have you done?” Charles asked; the burn in his blood had not gone in sight of this cruelty. It thrilled him. The tension at the base of spine,pooling in his groin, had only increased with the surveying of this half-naked body. Erik Lehnsherr, his mind reminded him. Erik Lehnsherr, with whom you travelled for a few months, always in desire. He pushed himself against Erik, scented his neck. Erik pushed back, eager to fit himself against Charles’ flesh. Ready to be ravished.

Charles shivered, then pushed two fingers into Erik. Erik, inspite of his height and broad back, was built built narrow and Charles’ fingers were dry. In the day dream, it had been difficult. The reality was easier, the fingers slid in easily in a smooth motion, eased by oil already. Erik let out a sigh,spreading his legs further. Charles withdrew his hand then spears Erik with one barely stuttered thrust; half a whine, caught in the throat, echoed eerily in the corridor.

The skin in front of him was glazed with a fine sheen of sweat. Charles bends low and licked the salt, biting slightly against the spare flesh above bone. One hand at Erik’s shoulder, the other ran along the long muscle in his arm, taut as it was braced against the wall, under his armpit, along the rise and fall of his chest to find the nipples, as hard as he had left them. He caught one between his fingers, rubbed it while Erik bucked against him even as Charles took him, deliberate and deep, finding the spot that wrung a sort of mad murmur of his name from Erik.

When he pulled out, it was a beautiful sight. His seed was trickling down Erik’s white thighs. But as Erik looked like he was going to collapse, Charles braced and turned him so he could lean against the wall, then insinuated his fingers into Erik’s entrance to find it satisfyingly wet. Sloe-eyed, Erik looked at him, desire not quite gone.

“What have you been doing since I saw you?” Erik murmured against his mouth.

“I-” Following the path of the drought, Charles thought, distracted by the wet tongue on his hand.

“You were following me,” Erik said, placing then the hand on his chest, pressing down until a white fluid issued from his swollen nipples. “You asked me how I knew she was mine.”

“Perhaps.” Charles nipped at Erik’s bottom lip, then gave in and tasted the milk- thick and sweet and healthy against his tongue.

“I can only think of you,” Erik said, whimpering a little above him. “Do you only think of me? Or are you still perplexed?”

There were questions Charles could ask, but he said nothing. There could be another morning and perhaps he would fight the notion, but Erik’s body was his for the taking and that he could not give up, whatever the cost. He palmed Erik’s thigh again, the vigor in the muscles, thought of them wrapped around his waist, and groaned. Devil take everything. He was the last of the Xaviers.

They righted their clothes. The air was old stones and dust. When they opened the door to the treasure room, a perfectly small red dragon sat in the arms of a scaled woman.

“Welcome home, Charles Francis Xavier,” Raven said. “We will not die.” She handed him his daughter, her eyes settling to blue and curious once he touched her and held her- warm and substantial and alive.

Charles wept. Outside, the sky opened up and rained.


End file.
